You will be able to strip identifying details from a document and set your assistant to keep less.
After cleaning up her history in lesson 7.1, What never goes into an assistant, Priya still had a real question about her insurance. Her policy's renewal letter mentioned a premium change and a revised benefit schedule, and she wanted an assistant to explain one page of it. The page had her name, her policy number, her address and her date of birth at the top. Last year she'd have pasted it as it was. This time she wanted a version that kept the meaning and lost everything that identified her.
That's redaction. It takes a couple of minutes once you have the habit, and together with the right settings on your assistant, it covers most of the risk.
The simplest method is to replace each identifying detail with a label that keeps its role. Priya's name became POLICYHOLDER. Her policy number became POLICY 1. Her address was deleted entirely, because the explanation didn't need it. Her date of birth became "age 31", because the premium depended on age but not on the exact date.
Placeholders are better than deleting everything, because the assistant can still follow the logic. "POLICYHOLDER pays the premium to INSURER on behalf of INSURED PERSON" is clear. The same sentence with three blanks isn't. If a document mentions several people or accounts, number them: ACCOUNT 1, ACCOUNT 2, CHILD A, CHILD B. Use the same label for the same thing every time.
Keep amounts if the explanation needs them, but think about whether exact figures matter. A premium of S$1,284.60 can become "about S$1,300" if you only want to understand how it's calculated. Balances usually aren't needed at all.
Work on a copy. Paste the text into a blank document or a note, make your replacements there, read the result once from top to bottom, and only then copy it into the assistant.
Many people redact a PDF by drawing a black box over the sensitive parts, or by cropping a screenshot. This often doesn't work.
Most PDFs from banks and insurers have a text layer: the words are stored as text underneath what you see on the page. A black rectangle drawn on top hides the words visually, but the text is still in the file. If you upload that PDF to an assistant, it can read the text layer, including everything under the box. The same applies if someone copies and pastes from the file.
Cropping a screenshot is safer, because a screenshot is an image, but images can still be read by assistants that handle pictures, and it's easy to leave a name in a corner or a reflection.
The reliable method is to not upload the document at all. Copy only the text you need, the clause or the table or the paragraph, into your blank document, redact it there, and paste that. You control every word that leaves your device.
The second half of this lesson is about what the assistant keeps.
Many assistants let you turn off the use of your conversations for training future models. The option is usually in the privacy or data controls section of the settings. Turning it off doesn't stop the provider storing your chats, but it limits one use of them.
Many also offer a temporary or private chat mode, where the conversation isn't saved to your history, or is deleted after a short period. That's a sensible default for any money question, even a redacted one.
The names, locations and exact effects of these settings differ between providers and change from time to time. Check the current settings in the assistant you use instead of relying on a description, including this one. Working with AI assistants, lesson 8.2, Data settings and the rules at your workplace, covers the settings in more depth, including what changes when you use an assistant through your employer.
Finally, find the provider's privacy policy and look for two things: how long conversations and uploaded files are kept, and what happens when you delete them. Some providers keep deleted content for a set period. Some keep files separately from chats. The policy is the only reliable source, and it can change, so it's worth a fresh look once a year.
You don't need to read the whole policy. Search it for "retain", "delete" and "training". Note what you find in a sentence or two. That note becomes part of the rules you write in lesson 7.4, Write your personal AI money rules.
Priya's redacted renewal page had six placeholders and no address. The explanation she got back was just as useful as it would have been with her details in it.
You probably have a page in mind already, and an assistant whose settings menu you have never opened.
Redact one real statement or policy page into a safe version, and change at least one privacy setting on your assistant.
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